Once out of nature: Augustine on time and the body

Abstract

Augustine was the first theologian to write an autobiographical book dealing with the themes of sin and salvation, time and eternity. Once Out of Nature broadly reconsiders his conception of embodiment, a crucial but poorly understood theme of his work. Andrea Nightingale uses embodiment to illuminate a set of problems much larger than the body itself - this notion, she demonstrates, is the key to understanding Augustine's accounts of time and the human place in the earthly world. Augustine offered the first exploration of the subjective experience of time in Western thinking, claiming that the human psyche always stretches away from the present moment - where the physical body persists - into memories of the past and expectations of the future. For Augustine, the embodied psyche dwells in two distinct time zones. Though Augustine's understanding of time and embodiment may sound outmoded, Nightingale connects his views to contemporary debates about trans-humans and suggests that Augustine's thought reflects our own ambivalent relationship with our bodies and the earth. A compelling invitation to ponder the boundaries of the human, Once Out of Nature contributes to conversations involving scholars working in late antiquity, literary critics, philosophers, and ecological thinkers.